Summary

• Inside the YouTube System Behind 10 Billion Views: Seb Losardo’s Grow Media Club client roster pulls 700 million views a month and over 10 billion in total. WillNE, John Nellis, Quadrant, KP and more. The thesis underneath all of it: virality is engineered, not lucky.
• Why 40:30:30 Beats How Most Creators Spend Their Time: 40% on ideation and packaging, 30% on the intro, 30% on the actual video. Most creators flip that upside down and wonder why nothing works. Seb explains why packaging is the single biggest growth lever on YouTube.
• How John Nellis Went From 1M to 12M Subscribers in 12 Months: Seb breaks down the strategy behind one of the fastest sub-count climbs on YouTube. The Mbappé blindfold video that did 60M. The hugged-100-footballers format. The pattern underneath: outlier mining, packaging-first design, and value exchange thinking.
• Inside The Switch With Kevin Pietersen: First upload did 12 million views on a fresh channel, hitting 100,000 subs in 12 days. Seb explains how he positions athletes coming into YouTube for the first time, why KP made it easy, and what the cricket landscape was missing.
• The Athlete Landscape Is About to Be Rewritten: Haaland, Bellingham, Ronaldo, KP. Some are building media businesses, some are just uploading. Seb breaks down what separates the channels that work from the ones that don’t, and why the next World Cup will redefine athlete content forever.
• Virality Is Engineered, Not Lucky: The whole episode is the public-facing version of the toolkit Seb usually sells privately. Outlier mining, story beats, value exchange, packaging-first design. Are sports and media properties applying any of it, or are they still pressing record and hoping?

Show Notes

• Grow Media Club

Transcription

Ed (00:01.437)
Hello and welcome to a very special edition of the Attention Shift, while we are where we are joined by one of the most accomplished YouTube strategists around the world. His client Roster now pulls in around seven hundred million views every month, with over ten billion views in total since he started. Seb Lazardo, welcome to the pod. Great to have you.

Seb Losardo (00:20.162)
Hello Ed, thank you very much. That was very kind as an intro. yeah, great to be here. just to introduce myself, my name is Seb Lasado, I’m a YouTube strategist and I’m the founder of Grow Media Club, where we work with elite creators, brands, and athletes on the platform to help maximize their views. As you’ve touched on there, we generate over seven hundred million views per month collectively across the whole client roster. And that includes the likes of Will and E, John Nellis, Red Bull Bike and more.

And and prior to that I spent a decade or so at Sky Sports and helped build their YouTube channels from zero subscribers up to bu up to about ten million by the time I’d left. And today I spend my time really trying to make YouTube easier for people I work with or interact with.

Ed (01:02.057)
Yeah, it’s interesting ’cause like when you s when you see those sort of those vast numbers, I think almost it could be mind blowing for people and almost they find it sort of hard to find a a a starting point, I guess, with how they do that. So look, you’ve done both sides of this. You spent a decade at Sky, you’ve said, and then you’ve walked into a supposed a different life with a lot of the knowledge that you gained. Taking you back to that early journey, because of

How it’s built and everything, do it now. How how how did that transition go off you like how did you start out in that sort of sky world and then and then go on from there?

Seb Losardo (01:42.136)
Sure. So prior to actually getting into the YouTube department, which didn’t really exist for a period of time, I was in the football department at Sky. And so after a while, YouTube became a thing. It was in twenty fifteen where they decided they were gonna try to get into that area and work out how to do that, and they wanted a small group of people from Sky to do that. And so there were four of us who went across to do that from Sky, and then we worked with an external company called Whistle Sports, and they were helping consult

Ed (02:06.781)
Yeah. They got acquired by did they get acquired by Dzone? If Yeah, cool.

Seb Losardo (02:11.03)
yes, I believe they did, yeah. and so yeah, they came in and helped support us in that first year and helped us make a number of shows with the likes of Adam Smith and Laura Woods and and really we were finding our feet in that first year and and truthfully I always say as the people I talk with, like, we made a lot of really bad videos. Like I think a lot of us now have come a long way in our careers, but

at that time I look back at those videos and think we were actually just doing it all wrong. And and that’s the nature of working on YouTube. I think when you start out you have to make a load of mistakes and just keep going and keep enjoying it. And and like I am to this day, like I love doing what I do. I make

videos for a living which is such a blessing that I just have to take it and and just keep learning and you know, when I’m working with like big clients now, I see what they’re doing, I can take little bits from each of them and it’s just this incremental process of compounding knowledge and and bettering what you do.

Ed (02:48.222)
Yeah.

Ed (03:01.159)
Yeah, I think that’s interesting, right, as well, ’cause I think people do sometimes get bogged down about the things that they’ve created that have maybe not worked out right or not got the reach they wanted or not got the hook that they want. W however you wanna describe and I think but I guess by doing all of that that’s how you learn then to find the things that did work and that you shouldn’t be doing, I guess.

Seb Losardo (03:20.706)
Definitely. There’s no real way through that. Like despite the fact we did have an external agency, I would say like I learned the v majority of what I know about YouTube from just doing. and that would be like filming everything, editing everything, making the thumbnails, like every single part of the process, producing the videos, directing the shoots. I was hands on with all of that from the very start and I’m not so much now, I don’t produce and edit shoots any wo anymore, but like

at certain point I had to do that and that that’s the learning process and and if you’re doing it with other like minded people, a guy, Alex Emery particularly, who I’ve worked with and still work with today, is the head of content for John Nellis. He was like an eighteen year old kid really when we first started out doing that stuff and a mega YouTube nerd at the time and knew loads about the platform much more than I did. But collectively look like working together with someone who’s enthusiastic about YouTube is that when you’re w working on projects together and talking a lot, naturally you improve together.

and faster because you just have this willingness and and ability to share your knowledge with one another.

Ed (04:20.061)
Definitely look, when you’ve got a passion and a genuine interest in something as well, it never feels like work. That’s that’s the reality. And I think that it’s clear that how you do it, how Alex is doing it with John, like, you know, the the reality is yes, it’s work and that’s how you earn from it, but but y it’s also like you do it because you genuinely enjoy doing it. You’ve got a passion for it.

Seb Losardo (04:38.198)
Yeah, and to be honest, I actually always had that mindset. when I left school, my dad used to say to me, like, what do you I think he was concerned I was gonna end up being a bum or something. And I said to him, I’m not gonna be useless. Like I will do something. I’ll end up working something out. I just wanna do something I love. And at that point in time, really football was my primary love. And so I that’s what got me into Sky. Like my

Ed (04:47.857)
We’ve all been there.

Seb Losardo (04:59.938)
desire to do something that I love doing because I I’m all conscious of the fact you spend an extraordinary amount of your time and in your life working. And so it felt logical to me if I was going to be doing like a nine to five or ten to six, whatever it happened to be, that’s an eight hour block. Like I better be doing something I enjoy for like forty, fifty years, or however much it compounds to be. So that was my logic and from football I then fell in love with YouTube really and pivoted across more there primarily.

Ed (05:05.778)
Yeah.

Ed (05:15.741)
Yeah, yeah.

Ed (05:25.373)
I think that that’s the thing that I mean, I know look, good parents and also good careers advise always say, like, try and pick something you love. I’m trying I’m doing I’m having the same conversation with my daughter at the moment. He’s just going through her G C S E’s and she doesn’t know what she wants to do next and I’m you know, we’re trying not to put any pressure on her with that as well, but also like trying to get her to home in on what is it she’s genuinely interested in and and and loves doing. So look, I think it’s good advice that. so from from

obviously your time at Sky and obviously you were there for a long period of time and you were able to like say hone your skills and make mistakes and and learn from it. How do you then start to think about that transition into the independent creator world? Like was it was it were people coming to you saying, Could you help us? or d had you already sort of mapped it out in your mind how you were going to go about it?

Seb Losardo (06:11.16)
Sure. So I I made the decision I was gonna leave Sky and at that point I thought, okay, what do I actually love? And ’cause I was at that point at Sky in my final two years I was working across every every single social media platform for every sport and

I actually always loved YouTube the most and so I like actually I’m not that interested in TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. And so I decided t to deep dive into that one thing and specialise on YouTube alone. And actually like that ended up being one of the best decisions I made along the way because it’s made me a YouTube specialist, which I’ve become a little bit more known for now. and actually if I’d been more broad and spread myself thinner, I don’t think I would have necessarily landed that brand, if you like, that I’m trying I have been trying to foster. And so

Ed (06:51.92)
Yeah. Yeah.

Seb Losardo (06:55.65)
That was just a good decision to to go down that route and to and to start focusing on that on that area. And then from there, really, it was a case of reaching out to people who I knew. And so just people like James Alcourt. So I’ve worked together with him across projects, and he’s a good friend of mine, to be honest. We’d been to guitar together for the World Cup. And at that time I was charging

Pretty small rates, to start the business up. I just wanted to get people through the door, to build a client roster, and to build some relationships with people, hopefully provide them with a load of value to the point where they’d be like, Wow, he’s really good and he’s really just like going above and beyond and I actually found that Well kind of, yeah. Like I don’t want people to feel like they’re dependent on me, but like I build my relationships with my clients now on this like idea of trust and connection and value. Those are the three things I think about. And

Ed (07:28.71)
Yeah, yeah. I can’t I can’t do without him now. Yeah. Yeah.

Seb Losardo (07:46.146)
And I think that all of my clients hopefully see that with me. and so yeah, working with James, I I eventually got to work with Quadrant and through that because actually Will Will and E wanted to work with Alex Emery on that and Alex needed help so he called me. So I was working with John. Sorry, I forgot as well, John Ellis actually came in at that very early stage as well. And he was on like six hundred thousand subscribers at that point, so it was early stages for him as well in his journey. But so I had James, John, and then Quadrant, and then Will wants to

Ed (08:07.25)
Yeah, yeah.

Seb Losardo (08:16.089)
work with us off the back of seeing us do the stuff with Quadrant as well. So after about six months I had a client roster of about four people and I was like Wow

Ed (08:23.43)
And and you’re earning you’re earning a good living at that point, right? So then you start then you can st I guess or no, all right, fair enough. No. Okay, good.

Seb Losardo (08:28.682)
It it was like it was coming to the point where it was close to my sky salary. And so I was like, Okay, I’m okay now. Like I’m I was the anxiety was reduced compared to of like my wife at one point was like, let’s just jack it in and get ahead of social role at like Chelsea, I think were advertising at the time and I like, No, I actually really want to stick at this and and so I didn’t ever look at things like that seriously and I just thought, yeah, I’m gonna keep doing this and now it’s at a point where it’s it’s at in a whole different stratosphere, truthfully.

Ed (08:32.123)
Right, okay.

Ed (08:39.474)
Yeah.

Ed (08:57.628)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well i look and not not to embarrass, but you have been described in industry write ups as the strategist who took you two from creator economy to media industry. And I think that’s because you did you’ve obviously straddled those those those those two industries which are becoming more and more interlinked every day. We were talking off camera, weren’t we, about the it’s not like, you know, traditional media bad, creator economy good. It’s kinda like you need all of these different pillars to be able to reach audiences because they’re fragmented across them.

What do you think that Sky give you that then you’ve carried with you into this not new world but different world that you’re working in now?

Seb Losardo (09:34.668)
Yeah. So a lot. definitely a lot. I think

The YouTube knowledge perhaps we built ourselves, but the corporate experience and the professionalism that comes with that, the exposure to working with world class athletes. at my time as Sky, I was able to work with people like Odol Beckham Jr., Ronaldo, any Premier League player you can name, Jürgen Klopp, like huge, huge names and you have to conduct yourself in a certain manner when you’re in these rooms and you have to behave in a yeah appropriately when you conduct when you’re speaking with the clubs or whoever the agents are. And I’ve noticed even since I worked

Ed (09:53.265)
Yeah.

Ed (09:58.366)
Yeah, yeah.

Seb Losardo (10:09.69)
with a major broadcaster recently and they were concerned about like whether I was going to be on time ’cause they’d had a lot of load of other YouTube strategists drop out and I I was really clear to the guy I like that’s not me. Like I’m yeah I’m a professional and you won’t see that as an issue.

Ed (10:21.192)
That’s not me, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I was gonna say to you and and interestingly as well, I think I and I’ve seen this a as well. I think when you get in rooms with these people as well, you somehow need to obviously you’ve got to be respectful, tank, all those things, but you somehow need to project as well that you’re an expert in your field too. This is not I’m trying to think of a best way of saying this, like that you’re not necessarily subversed because of who they are. They are an amazing NFL player, amazing footballer, and you’re an amazing this and you’ve got a job to do too. Cause I think w because when you pander, it tend you tend to not get what you want, and you’ve got to make it clear to them, no, I know what I’m doing.

Seb Losardo (10:49.069)
Yes.

Ed (10:55.068)
And we’ll come on to KP later and I think it’s important.

Seb Losardo (10:55.402)
I c No, I couldn’t agree more. Look, I I actually have always held that stance. I’ve always felt as though I wanted to tell what

my opinion truthfully on whatever the topic happens to be. I can even think of like the first years I worked on Champions League, I’d be in a room with with senior producers and like presenters like Jeff Shreves and people like that and I’d get asked my opinion and I would just say, like I will say exactly what I think. I’m not gonna like be unrest unprofessional or anything like that, but I’ll I won’t sugarcoat it either. I’ll definitely say exactly what I think ’cause I always look at that as like you’re trying to improve the outcome and like I’m not trying to hurt anyone’s feelings. I just wanna be direct and clear about what it is that we’re trying to achieve and

I think a lot of organisations really pander to talent and it means that you don’t get the best outcome at times and yeah, I don’t fundamentally believe in that.

Ed (11:43.046)
No, I I I I’ve I’ve seen it so much in sort of my time in I used to work in football as well and worked across di various different organisations. Like y if you plant you you’ve already lost the point you start pandering, like you’ve you’ve already lost the room. And if you’re not honest enough, like you you can be honest and respectful at the same time. Like I said, you’re only trying to make it better. You’re not trying to embarrass anyone or tell them to do their job. But there’s a reason that you’re there and and ultimately you’ve got to be able to give your opinion unfettered, as it were. so look

We’ve covered the sky. So your first year at at Grow, because by year two you’re doing seven hundred million viewers. And obviously we’ve covered that off quite a bit. So you’ve you’ve you’ve figured that out quite fast, really, right? How to then obviously go from being employed to to run your own business and I’m sure it was painful in during that time. So then you start transitioning to year two and you your wife’s much happier now ’cause you’re starting to earn what you need to earn. How do you then start to think to yourself, you know what, this is this is working now, this is a proper business, I can start to

I mean, grows the right analogy, right? I can start to grow this in line with what I want to get out of this.

Seb Losardo (12:44.066)
Yeah.

Seb Losardo (12:47.478)
Yeah, I think I think quite quickly it became clear that it was a serious business. Actually I didn’t have like there were definitely moments of uncertainty in that first year, without doubt. but I knew quite quickly that I was onto something. even the way I productize my service, which allows people just to request things from me, rather than like working hours in a day. I it allows me to manage my time in such an efficient way when I’m working out of sync with like I don’t go on direct calls for example and waste an hour of my time. I I do things internally and then I share it back to the client.

With Loom videos, and I feel like that really speeds up my processes. and so sorry, I’ve completely forgotten what your actual question was there.

Ed (13:25.947)
No, I d that transition. So obviously you’ve done that early part which we covered off and obviously like you said you you talked about how you start to get those clients on board and i y you know, you were getting close to what you were y earning in terms of when you were at Sky before and and then you get to that point where it’s now becoming a real business and probably have you probably have to think about all the things that come with having to run a real business and HMRC and all those kind of things. So y those those things just happen, right? You won’t have necessarily known how to do all those things, I imagine.

And then you’re looking for advice from other people, but then also thinking about how do I grow this now and how do I work with client the the clients I want to work with at the right commercial value, ’cause there’s only one of you, how does that start to develop as you get towards sort of year two?

Seb Losardo (14:09.43)
Yeah, sorry. so I think the key difference in year two actually was taking all those things on board and taking a step and putting myself out there more was probably the single biggest step to accelerate the growth of the business. I started doing LinkedIn in August last year and

After a f the first month I doubled the size of the business in terms of revenue. And so I was like, okay, this is a hundred percent working. and so I just have kept on doing that and actually just really thoroughly enjoyed that. Again, I think that’s all part of the process of like everything I’m doing, I’m just doing things I like doing. And even when it comes to client work, there are things that come towards me now. Luckily enough, I get inbound every single day. And I turn things down all the time. And sometimes they’re massive brands as well, because I think to myself,

I don’t want to do corporate nonsense. So I’m not going to play that game. I’ll just do whatever I want. Like in s within the realms of like I’m not like endless in terms of opportunities I have, but like I do have a good good opportun good choice, I suppose. And I can be selective with who I work with and I ultimately like I always think to myself, Well, who do I wanna work with? I wanna work with

Ed (14:57.009)
Fair. Yeah.

Seb Losardo (15:12.258)
People like who people I call the million view creators, people who can get a million views or have the ability to have e they’re either there already and want more or they ha like like an athlete, they’ve maybe have never done it before but they could get there. People who are hungry and who are really determined to go and get

the thing, get like you know, make the effort to achieve those goals and and that’s been compounding. All of that stuff is the same. I like I I promote myself via LinkedIn. I t by sharing knowledge as well, I I understand that like pro providing val value to people for free is a way in which to grow my own platform. And I think like I can talk about successes I have on with my clients because I work with amazing people and it’s sort of self fulfilling. There’s a circle going on there where I keep promoting myself, keep having success.

and that allows the business to keep growing and and because of that demand that’s now increased, I can then adjust my prices accordingly.

Ed (16:05.723)
I always like I I think ’cause I think some people do get, I guess, are the are they reticent to to share that knowledge thinking that people are gonna steal that knowledge and go off and do And then the reality is is like I and I I I not know this myself, like, yes, you can give that knowledge, but you’re you and you do it in a certain kind of way. Just because you give some knowledge doesn’t mean that they suddenly become you with your and we’ll come onto your toolkit now, actually. Your toolkit about how you go about doing things. Like in a lot of ways you’ve

Whilst it’s not a physical product, you’ve you’ve started for you in terms of how you work, start to productize your process, right? Because the reality is you kind of have to to have some kind of process. And I look, and I from the prep we’ve with this, you are very organized process driven, right? But I think that’s allowing you to to to do that. So I I I want to come on to the toolkit because I think you know it’s fascinating how you go about things. So you talk about a forty thirty thirty around the weighting of work.

What does that consist of?

Seb Losardo (17:03.766)
Yeah, so it’s it’s a bit like i it’s my YouTube formula really. I think about like how to allocate time. I think the the typical person makes a YouTube video because they want to make it, broadly speaking. And they probably spend about ninety percent of their time thinking about how to make that video, maybe even ninety-five percent of their time make making the entire video, and then they’ll probably put like five percent into making a thumbnail. That’s just the wrong way to do things. And so I allocate my time entirely differently. I think about putting forty percent of my time into ideation and packaging. So

What is the click? Like how am I gonna stop the scroll? How am I gonna make someone actually select my video?

And once I’ve done that, I then allocate 30% of my time into writing the intro. So I set up the video brilliantly. So I the thumbnail sets up the premise. once I’m in, the intro should confirm that I’m in the right spot, set the tone for the video, and then also make it really clear what the mission or goal is so that the viewer understands entirely why they should watch to the end. And then the video happens, and that’s 30%. The video is not unimportant, but it’s actually in many respects like less important than the packaging, because if if you can have a great video.

And if someone doesn’t click in the first place, then it it doesn’t matter, does it? Like I’ve seen campaigns about

Ed (18:13.978)
It’s almost like you’ve got you’ve got two stages that that is easy to fail on, which then does the payoff in the end. And if you don’t get those, like I say, the the last bit which you I mean you look you want the longevity of watch, right? But th i like you are not getting to the last bit if you don’t nail those two.

Seb Losardo (18:28.92)
But even like on the point of having the longevity of watch, the the the packaging sets the expectation. And so if you’re like retrofitting that, you’re less likely to have delivered exactly on the packaging. Whereas if you design the packaging up front, let’s say for example it’s a hundred hours to meet Messi,

I know, okay, I need to set up a hundred hour video that’s going to go from start to finish, and the final v thing, the final boss is meeting Messi in hour one hundred, and that is me perfectly executing that video.

Whereas most people don’t think that way. Even like at a top level, I’ve seen many creators who s sort of like fudge the packaging and think, a thumbnail could be a little bit like that. Whereas I think the way I try to implement it with all my clients is like, let’s really make the whole thing. Like, I know the title, I know the thumbnail, to in especially with AI now, there’s no excuses. I can make it almost perfect. Like I think some of my thumbnails are getting to the point now where they’re actually just good enough to publish. but

Once we do that, I do like a little scroll test on a website that I use. And so does it stand out? Does it actually make me want to click the video? I’ll share that with my clients.

And the people who know the game as well, particularly well, there are certain clients like again looking at Alex and John. If I share a thumbnail with him, Alex is is just gonna go, that’s gonna bang ten mil. Like he just knows. whereas with other clients, if it’s let’s say for brands who maybe have less experience and expertise within the team, I can explain like these are the various concepts I’ve come up with. This is the one that I think is the strongest. and rationale, like explain the rationale behind my decisions, but then we go and make the video.

Seb Losardo (20:05.068)
And so that the the video the the i the intro builds off of that packaging setup and makes people excited to want to watch the video. Like it should grab their attention, it should hook them and then yeah, take them on the journey like seamlessly from the intro through to the end of the video.

Ed (20:15.12)
Yes.

Ed (20:20.964)
I guess it yeah, I guess it’s the concept of a value exchange. Like you’ve you’ve set up at the front what you expect the audience to see as value, i.e. you’re like said you know, the messy thing and the and the reality is when they click through so when th when they come into the video then that needs to reaffirm the value that they’re going to get, which hooks them and then takes them on the rest of the journey of the video. So like they the they need to feel like they’re gonna get some value from doing this and you are effectively taking the risk away from that at the start.

Seb Losardo (20:39.15)
Exactly.

Seb Losardo (20:50.496)
Yeah, I think that’s entirely right. So like especially if you’ve got again, with the rise of AI where anyone could put Mr Beast in a thumbnail or anything else like that, I think it’s i in in especially p important right now. So if for example, for the video we did most recently for John, we asked millionaires if we could watch football in their home. Or we asked celebrities, sorry, it wasn’t millionaires. we have made that video previously. we had Will Smith in the thumbnail

Ed (20:57.786)
Yeah.

Seb Losardo (21:17.004)
And so the very first shot of the video was John walking towards Will Smith. So there can be no doubt in the viewer’s mind, wow, this is actually gonna happen. And then off the back of that, we set up the mission for the rest of the video. And along the way, we’re gonna meet this person, this person, and this person, ending with Mr. Beast. Actually, it didn’t work out that way in that video, it was Mr. Beast immediately. But the point is you set up the structure of the video so the viewer can see, okay, wow, we’re gonna meet Steph Curry, Janice, Mr. Beast, and Will Smith in this video, amongst other celebrities.

And that makes people want to watch through the entire video ’cause th the the value proposition to them at that point is extremely clear and extremely obvious that it’s high value. And that’s how you drive retention up ultimately. by promising the viewer something amazing and delivering on it, obviously.

Ed (22:00.101)
No, it it i it like I said, it is fascinating. I’ve and look, and I’ve been I I think I was aware of you b from Sky Days ’cause we worked for Sky for a number of years. I think your name had come up even though we’d never met, and then I think when you when you went, I think we might have even already been connected on LinkedIn. So I’ve been watching what you were saying and then obviously I saw the pod and listened to that too, and then conversation happened here. I was chatting with Will, who’s our producer on this as well, and I like, Look, there’s just so much here that you that that is just it’s just fascinating in general. Like look, I’m not necessarily making content myself, but it

When I see, you know, ’cause I’m like everyone else, I watch content on YouTube and it makes you look at how content’s being presented to you and made in a completely different way. and I think that’s why I I think y you do explain things really, really simply for the layman like me to understand and then start to connect the dots of why these things happen.

Seb Losardo (22:49.196)
I think that’s really important what you touched on there as well. Like, I study the best people as well. Like and and everyone should. Like if you want to get better, you naturally look at the people who are doing it better than you. And I know there’s been like the terminology of Mr. Beastification of YouTube, which has been a negative term in many ways, but actually like he’s just made videos better. Like the idea that he’s ruined the platform to me is kind of laughable. when Yes

Ed (22:57.904)
Totally.

Ed (23:10.48)
Well it used to be cats, dogs and food porn, right? I mean that w that was YouTube for a long, long time.

Seb Losardo (23:14.956)
Well, i it’s it’s harder now and I get like especially for the older generation who probably thought they were killing it back in the day and now it’s really difficult. It’s like, yeah, it’s it is definitely harder, there’s no doubt about that. But it’s made the whole experience is about making it better for the viewer. That’s the whole point of the algorithm. I think like many people treat the algorithm like it’s some sort of enemy, but in fact it’s really just its job is to distribute great content. It’s it’s it’s sitting there thinking, like Yeah, when you when you let’s say you log on to your p your YouTube app

Ed (23:16.995)
Yeah.

Ed (23:20.89)
Yeah.

Ed (23:28.432)
Yeah. Yeah.

Seb Losardo (23:43.968)
it thinks, what does Ed wanna watch? And it pushes that towards you. It’s predicting what you’re likely to watch based on your own user experiences, based on similar people to you and how they’ve reacted to that video. And so it it’s it’s really I think it’s like an amazing thing that you can make something incredible and even off like a first upload it can just do serious numbers if you correctly deliver.

Ed (24:05.935)
Yeah, yeah. It it it is. It I mean it is the democratisation not just of content creation but of content distribution. That someone with a niche interest can go global in a way that w was just never possible before because you were relying on the traditional sort of media structures of, you know, newspapers and TV and things like that. And and again not saying that that’s not good, but it’s this it this this allow I I saw a video a little while ago which was a guy who made

large scale I’m trying to think of the word to describe it now. He he was making these basically these radio controlled boats that he would put on I think it was in the late district. And did it ’cause it was a hobby. But then made the big I think it was the biggest aircraft carrier that anyone had ever made and float and like literally he was landing planes on it in one of the lakes in the lake district. And he’d set up a business and he’d hired a video editor with him as well and he was able to do his passion, which was building these models, but also created a content business as well.

on the back of it too. It’s kinda like well, why that doing something you love in a different kind of way.

Seb Losardo (25:07.394)
Yeah. Yeah, I mean he ultimately made something remarkable there, based on what you’re saying. And again, that’s how the platform works. Yeah, but that’s what it’s it it you know, it’s worth re when a video is like worth remarking about, it’s worth sharing. Therefore the algorithm again it can cop it can comprehend this. It’s there, it’s designed to understand like viewer satisfaction and it’ll be reading how long people are watching for, how many people clicked, like if it’s the world’s biggest carrier then it might be very interesting to a select group of people.

Ed (25:13.869)
It ended up on local news, it was that remarkable.

Ed (25:22.34)
Yes.

Seb Losardo (25:37.258)
And again that distribution is allowed to happen via via that premise of like it being great and delivering on that promise. And I just think that’s a a great thing.

Ed (25:46.724)
Yeah, I think l alongside obviously pe lots of people who do this, they’re passionate about certain things and they want make content. you know, the this idea of how do you I you know, idea ideas and there are processes you can follow, right? So I’m fascinated to hear you sort of you talk about like outlier mining, right? And what that is. Cause most people, if you say outlier mining, they will literally not have a clue what that is. And I see you talk about that a lot.

Seb Losardo (26:12.32)
Yes. So first of all you need to understand what an outlier is, to understand how the whole process works. And so an outlier is a video that overindexes or overperforms. So if you imagine a YouTube channel that typically gets a hundred thousand views on every single upload, roughly, and then all of a sudden it’s done a million views on a certain video in the last ten. It’s like it’s a ten X outlier because it’s done ten times typical performance on that channel. And so

What I do as part of my process of ideating is I do a a deep level of research trying to find videos that over-index. So I’m sitting there thinking, okay, what has overindexed? So that’s the process of literally just finding those videos, which is slightly laborious, but there are tools that can help you find those, including a website called One of Ten.

And then once I’ve found the like the what, then I’m thinking about the why. So I’m like, okay, why has that performed in that way? What can I take from this and bring into my own area, my own niche, and apply it to my own ideas? And so if I spend like if I was doing for like a a whole channel I of ideation as opposed to like a single video, I might sit there thinking, I’m gonna find a hundred outliers. and once I found that.

hundred outlier thing. That’s I see that as like the foundation for my ideation process. It’s the base of which I build off all of my ideas. So if I’ve got this really solid foundation because I’m building off of loads of videos that have overindexed, then it’s likelier when I start ideating myself that something strong is going to come out of that. Whereas many people might just jump in the shower and think, that’d be quite fun to make. Well it’s actually there’s no research that’s led you to that point. And so what we find is that the if something has been successful before

it will be successful again as long as it’s not oversaturated. So you’re trying to find things that you’re trying to find a unique sp spin on things that have have performed previously and that’s the skill really.

Seb Losardo (28:09.014)
So yeah, I’ll find a load of those outliers. From there I’ll probably scribble down like fifty ideas. As I’m going through and finding them, naturally I’ll think, that could be the title here. And I yeah, I’ll just keep keep writing those things down. And then after a while I’ll start looking at them and bas looking at the videos that overindexed and seeing how many views they did, how much they overperformed by, and then looking at my versions of those titles and try to sort of rank them based on how I think they’re likely to perform on my platform my channel. how interested my audience might be.

in those ideas. and once you’ve gone through that process of ranking them.

Ed (28:38.97)
Yeah.

Seb Losardo (28:44.386)
Then you really get through to the phase of like, actually can we make this? because there are certain times where you come up with a video idea and you’re like, it’s a good title, but actually that there’s no structure to that. It’s actually maybe it just feels like a short form video, or maybe we can’t make this for whatever reason because it’s completely unrealistic. like in that outlier moment where I’m ideating, I’m very much in dream mode. So I will think of a madness. Like and I always say this like the the idea that we came up with John was like, Can I we thought I’ll come and hug Ronaldo, which is such a stupid idea. But it’s like

Everyone normal would probably go, Yeah, y no, and just don’t bother. Whereas we were like, But if you can make that happen, then it’s gonna bang because it’s so unique. And and and I had seen a video from another another YouTuber a long time ago called Phideous. He he’d hugged Elon Musk, I think it was. And so based on that, I was like, Okay, well that really overindexed for him. And so if we can translate that into our niche, I can see that performing. And so on top of that we then

Ed (29:31.287)
Interesting. Yeah, yeah.

Seb Losardo (29:39.618)
We actually hugged a hundred footballers including Ronaldo. And so there was a load of like just a whole process of building towards him and him being like the final boss at the very top of the pyramid that we were working towards.

Ed (29:47.662)
Yeah. And I guess in the mindset of the viewer on that, the the reality is like obviously, yeah, look, everyone assumes that a hug’s gonna come at the end of it, but people are really diving into it because they know there’s gonna be a journey to get there and there’s gonna be lots of things that are gonna happen that journey. And you’re not telling people what the journey is and the the interesting things that happen, I’m sure like there’ll be a multitude of things. They know they’re gonna get the payoff, which is the hug, which is the value exchange, but they also know that it’s gonna be fun to the point of getting to that.

Seb Losardo (30:14.988)
Yes. Yeah, so the way I would think about that is, as we touched on before, first of all, no one’s gonna believe you’re hugging Ronaldo, so he needs to make it extraordinarily clear in the first shot, not afterwards. Straight away. The best shot of the video, the most important shot of the video is the first one. So it needs to be John just about to hug Ronaldo. And we’re also gonna hug Grealish, Pierlo, Bang, Bang, Bang, all this extra value that they weren’t expecting. So the viewer like lands in and thinks

Ed (30:22.103)
Yes.

Ed (30:34.263)
Yes. And that’s the journey, right? Yeah.

Seb Losardo (30:36.972)
Wow, you’ve exceeded my expectations. Based on the packaging, I thought you were just gonna hug Ronaldo. Now you’re gonna hug Ciolini, Zlatan. And so and also within that, you’re trying to set up this idea in your head of like And some of the players are gonna absolutely hate this. And so you want the viewer to think, my god, there’s awful tension here, because that creates suspense and the more suspense and tension there is, the likelihood of people watching on is drastically increased. And so those are little storytelling techniques you’re trying to lay into those first

Ed (30:56.313)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Seb Losardo (31:07.05)
under twenty five seconds really before flying straight into your first hug.

Ed (31:12.729)
So is this i and I guess does this come back to you then the this this idea, this this process that you’ve got of beats and and and rising progressions?

Seb Losardo (31:21.1)
Yeah, so once I’ve gotten through that process of actually ide ideating the video and creating the packaging and having the title and the thumbnail that we’re probably locked into, I would write an intro, which kind of is similar to the sort of stuff I’ve just touched on there. And then from the structure of the video, I think my I think in like two ways when I think about

video structure on YouTube. So for for people that don’t understand how YouTube structure works, like video progression is very important. And so what that means is how we move forward towards the end goal. So if the we’re progressing towards meeting Ronaldo in that example we’ve just touched on or hugging Ronaldo in case in this case. So I think about like how are we progressing? We’ve got a hundred footballers so we’re progressing through one footballer one at a time. That’s the progression mechanic. And then the escalation is effectively in this video as as I remember it, we had them race ranked

their FIFA cards so they were getting higher and higher ranks. So the viewer was understanding that the player is going to get bigger and bigger and bigger. So we you you think of it in those in those two ways of like you just want to make the video get bigger and bigger. But at the same time you don’t want

Ed (32:14.008)
Yeah, you can see the rise. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Seb Losardo (32:24.362)
So once you’ve done the intro, like I as I remember it again, I think we met Hyung Min Son off the back of the intro. So it’s like straight away, Wow, great player and we’re working towards Ronaldo and there’s all these players in the way. So you you’re front loading so much. Like it’s incredible how much value you’ve got to front load.

Ed (32:40.42)
And then everyone has a favourite and you might see someone that you’ve not been told like almost like you’re you’ll the these this these little almost like nuggets that appear. Like you there might be a certain player that you really, really love that wasn’t part of any of the packaging and you’re hanging around and see are they gonna see that person or that person too?

Seb Losardo (32:56.952)
Definitely. Like that definitely. And again, that’s like about exceeding expectations. So I saw Eiraq talking about this the other day. Actually, someone was like, You come up with such great packaging. How do you think about that? And how do you think about delivering on that? He’s like, Well, I think about like the craziest thing he can think of, basically the biggest and best ideas, which he spends ages doing on. And he’s like, Then I don’t make the video if I can’t overdeliver on that. So he’s not thinking about meeting expectations, he’s thinking about drastically exceeding expectations and the viewer having that incredible feeling of satisfaction within the video.

And enjoyment to the point where they clearly watch to the end. Maybe they share with their friends and like the videos, etc. All those sorts of things. And that’s ultimately where YouTube’s going. People are liking this. It’s really performing well. People, you know, I think things like shares, for example, if you go and watch another Air Act video, the platform’s like, okay, it’s kept them on the platform, they’re still enjoying the videos. It’s reward like they want to reward that process. And

Ed (33:46.008)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Seb Losardo (33:51.867)
Yeah, as a result, that video will get more impressions and the more impressions you get, the more views you get.

Ed (33:56.751)
Yeah. Yeah. And then obviously you get engagement. So as part of your your your process then as well, like is is is clipping coming into your thought process in terms of y I guess how you’re going to I mean look, ’cause obviously shorts are are are a big thing on YouTube too, right? Like is that part of your ideation process too? Like you think about the long form, but also how how are elements going to be clipped from within this to get other distribution as well?

Seb Losardo (34:21.3)
Not necessarily like clipping definitely is important, but it’s not something I’m thinking of at that stage. I really want to keep it a lot more simple and I just want to think about what’s the biggest and best ideas. And I I think that’s so critical to understand. Like for anyone who’s again like newer to YouTube, the biggest lever you can pull on YouTube is your ideation phase. And so that’s why I want to invest that forty percent of time in that point in that part where it’s like

Ed (34:25.337)
Right.

Seb Losardo (34:43.454)
If you have a bad idea, the ceiling is set lower and you can never exceed it. Whereas if I have an amazing idea, the job of the video is to get as close to that ceiling as possible. So all the clipping and extra distribution, and whether you’re if you’re working with celebrities or athletes or whatever, and they’ve got their Instagram and they can push to that, in my head, yes, it’s it has some value, but it’s secondary. Because the distribution that YouTube can give you organically via the algorithm if you just make an absolute banger, in my opinion, far outweighs that. But it again, you’ll see, I’m sure, like all these big creators now.

Now have these clipping networks, especially the ones who are like let’s say I show speed or someone like that who’s on a live for long for long periods of time, and there’s so much stuff that can be clipped. there’s obvious value to that, but I do I think for for videos like the ones that we’re making with John, I’m really thinking more about like what’s the actual clear value that exists within the video. And then, yes, they can clip out bits if they wanted to, where John meets PLO or Zlatan, because that’s inherent value, but it’s it’s not part of the my strategy.

Yeah.

Ed (35:45.229)
No, I I I I agree and I think like the it just feels like there’s just more inherent value for everyone in the full long form version. Like they’re they’re like like I said, they’re like the mini mini films, like the the the i like the p people I think the way they get hooked into it because they’ve had obviously that they’ve had all the markers they need to know that they need to be part of it, like the the value there is in that.

Look, there’s lots of people who might find it then through the odd clip that’s done here and there. But you also you’ve got to be careful that you don’t wanna give too much away in the clips. Cause then you don’t get the value you would expect from the long form, ’cause that’s how it’s been created.

Seb Losardo (36:18.125)
Yes.

Seb Losardo (36:22.388)
Yeah, and that that’s always a stri balance to strike. And actually, to be honest, it’s the same for the intro as well. Like I’m trying to front load as much as possible into that. But at the same time you’re conscious of like holding back a payoff. Like what the person clicked for, you have to hold that back. And certainly that would be the same. Like if you give away the the final moment of your video in the clips straight away, then there’s a chance that people won’t watch the longer form. which if if that’s if your primary desire is to make your long form per perform

Ed (36:45.219)
Yeah.

Ed (36:49.977)
Yeah, yeah.

Seb Losardo (36:50.69)
then it’s sort of counter counterintuitive or counterproductive.

Ed (36:52.94)
That makes sense. So look, I want to move to talk about the switch with Kevin Peterson, ’cause again, that just appeared one day on my YouTube timeline. At the time I didn’t know you you were involved in it, right? And started watching it and so you know, I’m interested to know sort of how that’s how that’s come together and what did the early conversation with KP look like. ‘Cause ’cause look, everyone knows, right, that who knows who Kevin Peterson is, he’s he’s a strong character, right? And that’s through him being England captain, a player, he was always outspoken.

As a commentator and pundit now he is. I think lots of people going into that. We talked about this earlier about putting yourself on a level KP, this is gonna be interesting. How did all of that come come around?

Seb Losardo (37:33.231)
So Prodigy Studios are working with Kevin Peterson. so there’s three people there’s three founders that work in that business, and and one of them, Tom, is the former head of content for the overlap. And so they they had conversations with Kevin about creating a YouTube channel together. And and the goal really of of Prodigy is to bring brands and athletes and communities together. And so

They’ve had those conversations with KP and I’m not really involved in that process. It’s sort of like like in terms of like the commercial parts or anything else like that. but they they’ve had those conversations about working together and building something together. And then at a at a sort of later stage when the YouTube stuff stuff gets involved, then I I’m brought in to help advise and and help grow the channels. And from like my when I started to engage with KP, like I just found someone who’s

very easy to get on with truthfully. Like I you know, I’ve heard all the things you’ve touched on there about KP’s reputation and maybe bits and pieces, but from my experience it’s just been perfectly pleasant and like actually brilliant because like there are certain bits. I remember the first time we filmed together, I was thinking about like the intro and I’ve touched on how how significant the intros are. I said to KP, look, I this is the boring bit that no one ever wants to do but like this is really important. He went, Whatever you need, I will do it.

Ed (38:28.472)
Go ahead.

Seb Losardo (38:53.176)
And if you need someone if you need this, that and the other, I’ll make it happen. And I was like, oof, I love that attitude. Because like I he wanted the best outcome. And and so I I’ve worked with many athletes in my time and it it’s definitely not always the case that I care. And so having someone who was so driven to actually want to make the videos better, it just made the whole process so much easier. We’re filming with K. L. Raoult, who’s obviously a massive superstar in India and globally, and he was sound as well, but like

Ed (38:57.517)
Yeah, yeah.

Ed (39:16.621)
Yeah, yeah.

Seb Losardo (39:20.824)
KP just made it all so easy. I would say like the lines I wanted them to say, they would say them, it was done. We smashed it out in about fifteen minutes and it was it was job done. It was like a seamless process working. Again, like yes, they’re not a creator, so they don’t have that inherent experience, but it’s from a broadcast background and has a big personality. So all of that stuff is just it’s just gonna come very easily for him, I think. and actually straight away I could see

There’s a creator there. Like he says things to camera certain at certain times that are quite natural in terms of like he’ll foreshadow certain moments well or give a stronger reaction to camera and it’s like he g he gets it. He actually gets it.

Ed (39:58.264)
Yeah. The great you know, the great thing there is like you said, you you touched on not all athletes think like that, but he’s he’s he’s obviously come at it from a preparation perspective, as he had the mindset as an athlete and he knows that that how he talks and what he says is in is impactful. So and and obviously it’s great that you obviously you’ve you set off out on that path with him at the start. So what does you know, six months in look like that first month working with him now? It’s is it to a certain degree now?

how this content is made that that he’s already setting up in his I know how to do this, I know how to do this so it becomes not necessarily easy in the sense of it’s just easier to do, but allows you to maybe do more with it because there’s inherent knowledge there from him.

Seb Losardo (40:39.182)
So I think the the biggest thing honestly that’s changed is more the stuff around him rather than him hims him himself. Of course he has improved. But at the start it was very much for those first shoots it was me and Tom and an external producer managing those and so it was a much smaller operation. Whereas Tom’s now like further back from it, has a head of production, Pat, who’s fantastic and I liaise with him every single day now. But actually like in terms of like my input, it really the

nothing’s really changed other than the fact I went on the first couple of shoots. So I did the KL Raoul and the Ouvrage Singh one just to sort of help. and now I don’t do that because that’s not really part of my offering. but at that point it was like just to make this one go smoothly and to make everyone understand how it should work, then that then I’ll get involved at that stage. But now there’s just more infrastructure around the athletes. They have a much bigger and broader team and and so

that happens directly via me and Pat now. So I I still like help script the intros and and structure the videos and other bits and pieces and and ideate for them as well. but yeah there’s more around that. But also definitely like KP’s more natural in in the intros now. Like he’ll say things with a bit more flavour because he understands what he where he can throw his personality into things a little bit more and stuff. So he’s finessing that and learning. But yeah it’s more the infrastructure that’s changed.

Ed (41:52.088)
No, that’s good. So I look, and you can I was gonna ask you this question and I was actually reading through my notes a little bit like, you know, when was the moment that it that it clicked that the collaboration was work? But you’ve described that already. It was right at the start where y y you can just see that he’s lent into it. And we’re gonna come onto the change in athlete landscape, and I guess that’s one of the things that if you’re coming into this an athlete, you’ve got to lean into it. but before we get to that, what’s the bit of the switch that you are proudest of strategically? something that no one outside would would see or know.

Seb Losardo (42:10.968)
Yeah.

Seb Losardo (42:17.474)
Yeah.

Seb Losardo (42:21.474)
So I think yeah, there’s a couple of things there. So just on in terms of like the first upload and and going back to the point where you made there about like knowing it’s going to work as well, they’re almost like t tied into each other actually. we went through the process of making these videos. We were working with massive superstars. KP’s, you know, his contact looks crazy, so he’s pulling in all these people. And but then it’s the first upload ultimately. You’re only as good as the outcome.

Ed (42:39.587)
Yeah.

Seb Losardo (42:45.75)
in the end. And so that first video for Rashid Khan, it did a million views in the first day, on a fresh channel with no uploads, I was like, Okay, wow, we are on to something here. Like straight away I was texting Tom, like, this is going to bang beyond belief. And for a first video it’s now at twelve mil. So to go beyond ten million views on a first upload, like I certainly I’ve never achieved that before and never been involved in a process like that. And it just speaks to

Ed (42:55.043)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Seb Losardo (43:13.056)
everything behind the scenes as well, like the collective efforts of all of the team coming together, KP, pulling people out and the production experience from Tom as well, from his from his time at the Overlap and he also previously worked at Sky as well. So there’s just so much come together there. But we were definitely straight away thinking, Yeah, we’re onto something here. And actually even before that

I think looking at the sports landscapes, I actually think loads of the sports land landscapes untapped. And I I’d certainly thought it about cricket. It’s a massive globally like intra like a global sport. And it feels as though no one was doing that in an entertaining manner. And so that once we entered into that in a way that hadn’t done before with top athletes, in my head it was like, how could it not work?

and so that’s probably the main thing really strategically, is understanding the audience fit there of and and the gap in the market. That’s that’s probably yeah, the point.

Ed (44:02.423)
No, no, that that that’s and and look, and I think this brings us nicely on to actually the changing athlete landscape and like you know, that’s a great example I think of a of an athlete deciding that he’s going to build a a a media business essentially. And look, and it’s part of a bigger shift and we’re seeing more and more footballers now sort of trying to do this and have their own voice as it were, the likes of Haaland and Bellingham and Cristiano Ronaldo and and some do it well and some do it not so well. and and and do it for various reasons and

I was having a little bit of a chat with with Will early, just from my own personal perspective. It’s kind like I see what Ronaldo does and I see how huge his channel is, but I don’t see who he is. I don’t get any feeling. And I think the kind of content you’re talking about is like people have to connect with it. And I think YouTube is a platform, it’s like it is so community oriented. It is where people want to see the real version of you and they can see right through it if it’s not.

Seb Losardo (44:42.997)
Yeah.

Seb Losardo (45:01.804)
I mean definitely, like I think YouTube is there for you to show your personality, be authentic, control the narrative, and and have distribution and eventually own a media empire potentially if you go to go about it the right way. And like it’s hard to like sniff at what Ronaldo’s done when he’s got seventy nine million in subscribers, but at the same time if you look at like the last six or seven or eight uploads, whatever it is

It’s not him, it’s not even football. Like I’ve seen like fighting on there and other bits and pieces and it’s like, well, it’s done like a I saw a video the other day at a hundred and sixty thousand views and it’s like if you’ve got seventy nine million subscribers and you’re doing a hundred and sixty K, for me that points to the fact that you’re doing something really quite wrong. And and may you know, maybe there’s just broader

Ed (45:35.779)
Not working.

Ed (45:40.483)
Well there’s no value exchange, right? Like people are not getting what they expect of that channel ultimately. They’re getting something completely different.

Seb Losardo (45:44.598)
No, exactly. They signed up to see Cristiano Ronaldo, him behind the scenes, maybe with his kids, with his wife or whatever, doing football challenges, having long podcasts, whatever. That could be so many things. And it’s none of them. Realistically.

Ed (45:56.439)
Yes.

Ed (46:00.748)
So who’s doing it right?

Seb Losardo (46:02.796)
I mean Haaland’s the closest. I think like same bracket in terms of Megastar. Obviously Haaland’s less famous than Ronaldo in terms of like Ronaldo being the most famous person in the world, but Haaland’s a a massive, massive superstar and he just is doing it the realest way. Like him doing the Joker thing at Halloween and stuff, like I think that’s his best video so far.

And even the first one actually the What’s the Life of a Professional, it’s like his breakthrough video if you like and his first upload. was very real. I think there is times where he’s sort of wandered off again, fair play in a way, like doing whatever you want, like him playing golf. I don’t think maybe the average person signed up for that.

I th I always say to people when I work with them, like lean into your unfair advantages and in his case you’re a footballer and you’ve got access to crazy stuff. So I would be thinking about that more so than that other kind of approach. But the secondary point really and the b biggest area for growth of him is his packaging. well both ideas and packaging but his packaging is

Not that not that strong, respectfully. and so that that can grow and improve a lot. but he’ll get there because he as long as he is enjoying it and he can keep up the consistency, he’ll get there because he’s do he’s approaching it in the right way. And I think like anyone, you have to have those bad uploads, unless you’ve got like a really strong team around you, you have to have those like bad those bad videos, if you like, to get to the point where you’re consistently making great videos every single time. Because it’s it’s it’s a real you know, it takes years to work out how to make

Every single video do whatever your views target is. Like there’s a world in which Haaland should be doing ten mil every single upload, realistically, because of who he is. And so he’ll get

Ed (47:32.279)
Yeah, yeah.

It feels yeah, feels like it it feels like he’ll get there because I th it feels like there is a depth to his personality. He’s he’s not afraid to show who he is and he’s in like obviously his investment into chess and things like he’s not afraid to just be into the things that he’s into and and talk about it and show people what he’s what he’s into. And isn’t he he feels quite unguarded in the way he does things without

like going off on massive tangents in a lot of ways. Like I said, there’s there’s there’s those things around it. But like I say, he’s trying to do it over a period of time. He’s he’s working it out, whoever’s helping him to do that. And y and ’cause I think that’s what lacks a lot. You’ve you’ve worked with loads of footballers. I think that certainly if you think if you compare European athletes to maybe American athletes and the way that they you if you think if you think about some of the you remember some of the

The Kobe stuff with Nike where, you know, Kobe’s in a in a in a I don’t know if you ever saw the one where he was in a a theatre and he was almost doing a key speech. And you’ve got like Rich and Branson in on in the front of the and he he’s he’s almost like he was lecturing them on on on something. I I think we lack some of that kind of personality over this side of the pond.

Seb Losardo (48:45.428)
Yeah, I think that’s true. I think obviously footballers have been very conditioned to speak in a certain way and actually they don’t have to do that on their own platform at all. I think the important things for like Haaland is like one, he’s mas massively sound, obviously. Like everyone can see he’s the normal guy. And I think the critical thing is to be enjoying it. ‘Cause I think like look at like again, there’s extenuating circumstances, I’m sure, ’cause he was injured, etcetera, but Jude Bellingham hasn’t uploaded in the whole of twenty twenty five and

Ed (48:49.175)
Yeah.

Ed (48:58.39)
Yeah. Yeah.

Seb Losardo (49:10.978)
That points to something going wrong there. Like either logistically there was not the right setup or he’s not enjoying it maybe because the outcome wasn’t looking so great in terms of viewership and performance was quite low in some of the most recent uploads. And so you need to be finding that balance between like what you’re good at and what you really enjoy doing it. And I think like that’s just part of especially when athletes, you know, it’s it’s not really a surprise that everyone knows they’re making loads of money. So if they’re gonna invest their time into YouTube and it’s not doing well, then they’re gonna soon stop doing it.

’cause they can make money swear. And so it really has to make sense for them to be actually invested into it.

Ed (49:41.196)
Yeah.

Ed (49:46.925)
I do wonder with the Jude thing as well, obviously, because Gareth Bale used to get a lot of grief right for for when he wasn’t playing for playing so much golf and the Real Madrid fans got after him quite a bit that he he wasn’t focused on the game. If Jude’s seen that and gone, you know what, I just need to get him just not even though I might be doing other things outside of the game, just not show people I’m doing other things outside of the game ’cause Gareth got a lot of grief for it.

Seb Losardo (50:06.646)
I think that remains a massive challenge. I I I that domin is gonna topple, like especially with people like Haaland and Ronaldo.

Ed (50:08.855)
Yeah.

It’s unsustainable. I just d I don’t see the point. Like I I think these ways you can do that and tell your story.

Seb Losardo (50:17.644)
I think also as younger generations come through and they expect that and understand that it’s really not impacting their performance necessarily either, I think that will change. But I it I think

It just takes time. It’s like even when I started at Sky, we were making YouTube videos with Premier League players to start with, and we started with Craig Cathcart, really you know, we did a five aside, dream five aside film, which is really safe and fairly low profile player. And then o over time we got to the point where we could ask Jurgen Klopp the most ridiculous questions about himself on the internet because you earn that trust and people realise actually, yeah, Jürgen Klopp’s not gonna lose the next game ’cause he’s I’ve asked him if he’s got fake teeth. Like it’s it’s not having an impact at all.

And so but football fans are quite easily offended sometimes. And if if their team loses and there’s someone to blame, then the YouTube person is gonna be the person that gets the blame most likely. And I’m sure people like Ben Foster would have been copying that for years.

Ed (51:14.006)
Yeah. Yeah. No, I agree. So what’s the opportunity for clubs, you know, and agents I guess to lean into this earlier? What what are they what are most of them missing?

Seb Losardo (51:26.498)
What football clubs?

Ed (51:28.234)
Well let you know, let’s talk like you know, let’s talk about like the the players like it could be could be clubs, could be agents in terms of though those players that they’re working with to actually lean into this, to actually make this a benefit rather than a challenge or a problem.

Seb Losardo (51:35.768)
Yeah.

Seb Losardo (51:39.896)
Got you. Yeah, I think o ultimately

To be honest, like anything on YouTube, like if you build trust and relationships, you can ultimately commercialise it. If you think every single player has an Instagram account, no questions asked, and they all know how to commercialise that and they found ways to create a revenue stream from that. Well YouTube’s exactly the same, but it’s just gonna build even deeper trust ’cause you spend more time with the athlete. So as long as they’re being real and authentic and likable and all those things, there’s just another opportunity to generate huge amounts of revenue and control and

And if you don’t want to if you want to speak on a topic, let’s say for example you don’t get the interview with either BBC or Sky or ETV, ITV or whoever, well you can speak because you’ve got your own platform. There’s no one stopping you. It’s free, it’s no barriers to entry. And so I look at that and think, well there’s a a huge amount of upside there for people who are maybe wanting to enter it for the first time. And then for whether it’s like clubs or anyone else

We’ve seen on social media again, which is seems to be a little bit further ahead, how things have changed over time. Let’s say for example, like when Arsenal lost the Champions League the other night, Chelsea posted about if you want to see the Champions League trophy, we’ve got it in our stadium, like tour or whatever. Like that kind of thing would not have happened whilst I was still at Sky, like, ten or so years ago. Because it would have been completely unacceptable to post something like that. Well the landscape’s changed. People like enjoy that level of humour now. It’s all part of the rivalry and everything else. And I just think over time the same thing’s gonna happen in New

Ed (52:55.575)
Yeah, yeah.

Seb Losardo (53:07.632)
YouTube where people are like, okay, the players going and doing this small format where they make they play guest of football or whatever, they c they they do YouTube formats, it’s absolutely harmless and I just think there’ll be massive revenue opportunities that come w come from that for though especially for those who get there first. I think the people like Haaland, he’s gonna absolutely kill it because he’s the first come and he’s a massive name.

Ed (53:28.78)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, true. I tell you it’s gonna be interesting, obviously we’ve got the World Cup coming up right. It’s gonna be the well, look look the first world that YouTube, if you think about what what’s happened with YouTube over the last four years from the last World Cup, and look and FIFA doing what they’re doing and all that, but it’s gonna be interesting see what the players are doing in and around the World Cup for the first time that YouTube’s at the point it’s at and we are so used to this digital distribution of content and they’ve got their own voice. just the kind of things we’re good that we’re gonna see and what’s gonna come out of it.

Seb Losardo (53:57.998)
I I think it was not just for the players, but I think the creator access will be unparalleled. I think the idea I was at Qatar, I actually went to a third of the games at the last World Cup, which is quite insane. but like so I was really close to it and the creator access was good, it was better than anything I’d seen before. But I think next next World Cup I think it’ll be unprecedented. I think the level of access that the top creators are gonna get to the players via brands or anything else will be beyond w anything we’ve ever seen before. Again, because they understand like that you can amplify them

Ed (54:01.492)
Yeah.

Ed (54:06.479)
wow.

Seb Losardo (54:27.792)
Message. If if you’re if they’re selling a boot or a ball or whatever it happens to be and you’ve got a massive creator like a John Nellis or a Foot Crunch or Celine Death who’s wearing the shirt from Belgium or whoever it happens to be, naturally you’re gonna sell more shirts because people are gonna see it and think it’s cool. And so

I think from that perspective that’ll be increased. It’ll be fascinating to see how Haaland uses his YouTube channel during that period of time and whether or not he he really goes for it or whether he just completely ignores it and luck knuckles down on pure normal stuff.

Ed (54:59.135)
Yeah, he might just go, I’ll just I all I wanna do is just do the bet ’cause they’ve obviously it’s twenty six years since Norway were last in the World Cup. So it’s a long time. look, and I saw a beautiful video that the I think it was the King of Norway di it was it was like ’cause obviously we’ve seen all the videos right the all the different teams have done about the squad announcements, but like the King of Norway doing this video about it’s been so long and it was about the people and fjords and it i yeah, it’d be interesting to see how I’m I’m not not he’s not taking it seriously if he

Seb Losardo (55:05.026)
Yeah.

Ed (55:25.225)
If he does do videos but in his mindset he may well think, I just need to knuckle down.

Seb Losardo (55:29.728)
I I’m convinced he could separate the two. I’m absolutely convinced. He’s just too smart. Like he’s he’s so good at what he does and he looks so relaxed and the behind the scenes, the reality is when the camera’s not rolling, he’s probably just I mean, I think he is just playing FIFA with his mates and doing stuff like that anyway. So it’s like what difference does it make if there’s a camera rolling? Especially if you’re not actually like he’s not planning and producing all of these shoots. He’s not booking the camera ups and stuff, is he? It’s like it’s it’s you know pe people are not

Ed (55:32.213)
Me too. Yeah.

Ed (55:53.002)
Exale.

Seb Losardo (55:57.516)
I don’t know how people can’t understand that.

Ed (56:00.212)
I I yeah, I look a lot and I think like look these kind of chats are are useful to for people to understand ’cause I think you know, people just make see things and make assumptions and I lot you you probably spend your days trying to explain these kind of things and I do too, actually the difference between between obviously what people see and what actually goes on behind the scenes. Like there’s just infinite opportunity that

Again, you as a planner is if you plan these things out, then it’s not onerous for people. It’s when you turn up unexpected, just do stuff with no goal, it doesn’t work.

Seb Losardo (56:32.502)
No, exactly. And that’s kind of the beauty of the prodigy model, honestly, like working with them. The athletes we have time slots where we work with them, but realistically, like yes, they do come forward with ideas definitely and you want them to be engaged and buy into the channel, otherwise it will never actually take off. And using KP as an example, he he for sure puts ideas into the chat. But there’s lots that goes on around him because he’s not booking everyone’s flights to India or wherever it happens to be, obviously. Like that gets outsourced b by the to the production company who manages all of that and

that collective team effort is what makes their life easier and actually allows them to have consistency to and do the bit do the bit they enjoy, which is just making videos with their friends.

Ed (57:11.595)
Cool. Seb, this has been absolutely fascinating. And just from my perspective, just been geeking out listening to you, I’m not gonna lie.

Seb Losardo (57:18.774)
I appreciate it. I’ve enjoyed coming on. I think I just love speaking about YouTube, truthfully, so it’s great to be on it.

Ed (57:23.647)
No, no, no, I love hearing about it as well. Like I said, like I’ve already listened to other stuff that you’ve been on, watched other stuff you’ve been on, I’ve I’ve read a lot of what you said, but we’ve not met before and just to be able to have an hour with you and and just just just talk about some of these things has been great. So what I’m gonna ask is is obviously for anyone who’s heard what you’ve had to say today and would dearly love to work with you, how do they find you?

Seb Losardo (57:44.248)
Sure, so the best way to get hold of me is on my LinkedIn. So my name is Seb Lasado. If you can find that, then you’ll find me. If not, you can have a look at my website, which is www.growmedia.club, and you’ll be able see how I work, my rates and everything. They’re all on there, so it’s all up front. so yeah, please do reach out.

Ed (58:01.877)
Perfect. And if anyone is not convinced already, then you’re just not listening. As far as I’m concerned. no, no. Thank you so much. So thank you for joining us today on the Attention Shift Pod. I’ve been Ad Abyss. if you would like to get in touch or like to be a guest on the pod, you can email us at hello attention shift dot media. please like, subscribe and and thank you, Seb.

Seb Losardo (58:07.598)
Thank you, that’s very kind. I appreciate it.